Last Monday night in The Bronx in the eighth inning of a game the Yankees led 2-1 with one out and none on, Toronto’s Josh Donaldson ducked under a Dellin Betances full-count pitch that split the heart of the plate by any objective measure.

But home plate umpire Jerry Mears bought Donaldson’s Eddie Gaedel act and called ball four in his own subjective interpretation of the strike zone.

Nowhere else on the field is an umpire granted such latitude in applying his own standards as he is in calling balls and strikes. Imagine if an outfield umpire in a postseason game signaled for a home run on a ball an inch on the wrong side of the foul pole because coming that close met his own particular standards.

Absurd? Of course, but so is the concept of a strike today being called a ball tomorrow. So is the concept of pitchers being forced to adjust to a particular umpire’s interpretation of the strike zone, of catchers being rewarded for being able to frame pitches (i.e. fooling the umpire) and of home/road, left-handed/right-handed batter bias.

Having arrived at this stage of the 21st century in which GPS systems and advanced computer technology have brought us the driverless car, the time has come for baseball to work cooperatively with the best technology minds can develop and perfect computerized batter-by-batter strike zones and to introduce the robot umpire behind home plate.

Don Mattingly, who knew the strike zone as well anyone while wearing the pinstripes and now makes his living managing the Marlins, sure thinks so.

“I’d put the electronic strike zone in. Just watching the last couple of years and with the technology we have, it’s so hard for these [umps] to get the calls right,” Mattingly said during the Mets’ series in Miami late last month. “I know they say they’re not missing many [calls], but for me, they’re missing too many. We see the video and most games it’s more than 20.

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“You think about umpires. They get older and older and you’ve got guys throwing 98, 99 [mph] with movement. If you made it electronic, you would know what the zone was and how to handle it.”

An umpire would remain stationed behind the plate to make the ball/strike signal as relayed via digital communication. The umpire would be responsible for all other calls at the plate. Of course, this is not something that could or should be rushed into the major leagues.

The system should be used first on an experimental basis in perhaps short-season Single-A and Double-A leagues before results would be reviewed by MLB in advance of implementation in Triple-A, and then, after another review process, into the big leagues following what would certainly require collective bargaining with the umpires union.

There were 298 pitches thrown in the average MLB game last season. Allowing for balls struck, that would have left 200-plus calls a game based on an individual’s subjective interpretation of the rules. That’s 200-plus too many.